PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

URALS DEMOCRACY CENTER

Russia

Recipient:                                 Chelyabinsk Regional Public Fund “Helping Hand”

Dates of Project:                      March 1, 2005  - February 28 , 2006

Amount Approved:                   $44,175

I.         BACKGROUND:

In many respects, prospects for democracy in Russia seem bleaker today than at any time since the collapse of the USSR. After four years in office, President Vladimir Putin has eliminated virtually all possibility of opposition to his administration. Even mildly critical programming has disappeared from Russia’s television networks, and independent radio networks and newspapers are difficult for ordinary Russians to access. Mr. Putin has gutted the powers of the upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, and has subordinated the lower house, the State Duma, by engineering a commanding majority for the United Russia party, which backs most of his proposals unconditionally. Democratic political parties have been reduced to marginal status, and Mr. Putin has recently put forward proposals to to make regional governors appointed, rather than elected, and to abolish directly elected representatives to the State Duma in favor of party lists. Other recent statements by Mr. Putin seem to indicate that a major campaign against independent NGOs is planned for coming months.

Nevertheless, there are countervailing forces in society that can serve, to some extent, to balance the rapidly increasing power of the central government. Committed citizens continue to mobilize efforts in support of a wide variety of causes across Russia. With enough support, these groups can still have significant effects. During the spring and summer of 2004, Russian civil society organizations succeeded in mobilizing widespread opposition to a law pending before the Russian Duma that would have restricted the ability of Russian citizens to organize public demonstrations, protests and meetings. This law was eventually withdrawn from consideration. Both the proposal to dispense with directly elected governors and deputies and the recent replacement of social benefits with cash payments are quite unpopular with the Russian public, despite their widespread support inside the government. Human rights groups, in particular, can play a significant role in mobilizing people. On an everyday basis, they also serve to make life somewhat more plural and humane in a country not known for its respect for individual dignity.

In order to increase respect for human rights in the southern Urals region, the Chelyabinsk Oblast Public Fund “Helping Hand” will use renewed Endowment support to continue its program of legal assistance and human rights education and training in the Cities of Chelyabinsk, Ekaterinburg, Magnitogorsk, and Zlatoust. By supporting Helping Hand’s program, the Endowment makes a direct contribution to democracy by supporting the growth of civil society in a region where individual rights and the public interest are often ignored by the government.

II.        PROJECT OBJECTIVES:

  • To improve knowledge of and respect for generally accepted norms of human rights among journalists, young people, and teachers.

  • To increase the legal and management expertise of NGO leadership; to contribute to the growth and stability of the NGO sector in Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk oblasts.

  • To raise awareness of individual rights and related legal issues among the population of Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk oblasts.

  • To provide legal aid in concrete instances of human rights violations.

III.      PROJECT ACTIVITIES:

The Chelyabinsk Regional Public Fund "Helping Hand" (“Helping Hand”) will use renewed Endowment support to continue its program of legal assistance and human rights education and training in the Cities of Chelyabinsk, Ekaterinburg, Magnitogorsk, and Zlatoust. Helping Hand’s “Human Rights Ambulance” will continue to offer free legal aid in all four cities, including working with inmates in the region’s prison system and their families. Helping Hand’s Human Rights School will continue to provide courses on human rights, democracy, and civic activism. This year, Helping Hand will increase the attention it pays to educating journalists on human rights issues

Helping Hand’s “Oblast Human Rights School” will work with cohorts from four distinct groups: students at the Chelyabinsk Oblast Pedagogical University, journalism students at Chelyabinsk State University, practicing journalists, and NGO leaders. This year, Helping Hand’s work with officials and staff from the Chelyabinsk oblast penitentiary system will be continued using non-Endowment funding.  The Chelyabinsk Pedagogical University has asked Helping Hand to include its human rights course as a fully registered course at the university. Throughout the spring and fall semesters, Helping Hand expects that at least 100 students training to become teachers will register for its courses. Similarly, Helping Hand’s course will be included as a practical course for upper level journalism students at Chelyabinsk State University under the course title “Mass Media and Civil Society.” In addition, Helping Hand plans to conduct a version of its human rights course for between 10 and 20 practicing journalists, working in conjunction with the youth wing of the Union of Journalists of Chelyabinsk Oblast. Helping Hand’s final class will be for the leaders of newly-established NGOs and will focus on management, fundraising, and project development.

Helping Hand’s curriculum for all groups will include the fundamentals of human rights, international agreements regulating human rights, the responsibilities of the state and individuals with regard to rights, and human rights in the context of the judicial system. Each group will also attend seminars on specific topics relating to their specific needs. Pedagogical students’ courses will include sections on youth extremism and the role of teachers in protecting human rights. Journalists and journalism students will have seminars on ethical guidelines for covering human rights issues and on how to handle censorship and other conflicts with the authorities as a result of covering controversial subjects.  NGO representatives will learn about NGO laws and management, including basics of accounting and fundraising.

Helping Hand’s “Human Rights Ambulance,” staffed by lawyers and law students, will continue to provide legal aid in pretrial detention centers, where detainees’ rights are routinely violated. Groups of volunteers and lawyers will visit pretrial detention centers in the four cities and provide basic legal advice, like help filing complaints and requests with prison management, and will also distribute human rights literature. Helping Hand will continue to operate four full-time free legal clinics, maintaining small offices in Magnitogorsk, Zlatoust, and Ekaterinburg, in addition its main office in Chelyabinsk. While most of the legal advice offered by the clinics is fairly basic, Helping Hand is prepared to help clients appeal to the court system in particularly serious cases. This year, Helping Hand will make a significant effort to expand its work with groups other than inmates and their families. The clinics are staffed by lawyers with many years’ experience working with Helping Hand, as well as by law students, who are chosen on a competitive basis. The clinics will continue to bring outside resources and expertise into their work. In Ekaterinburg, a representative of Sverdlovsk oblast’s human rights ombudsman will work directly with the clinic. In Magnitogorsk, the clinic has begun working with a retired prosecutor who had been advising the local prison system on human rights issues.

Finally, Helping Hand will continue to use its office as a resource center to help overcome one of the most fundamental problems facing new NGOs throughout Russia–a lack of basic organizational infrastructure. Helping Hand will make available office machinery, supplies, email and the services of a bookkeeper to NGO trainees and other new NGOs. Supplying such organizational necessities, even on a short-term basis, allows organizations to start working even while they search for basic sources of funding. Helping Hand also consults with organizations throughout the region, assisting with organizational, fundraising and management issues. Helping Hand’s leaders estimate that around 60 organizations have come to rely on the organization’s assistance. This year, Helping Hand will make an increased effort to build connections between the graduates of its Human Rights School who are interested in starting NGOs and the existing organizations that make use of the resource center.

IV.       EVALUATION PLAN:

Helping Hand’s program of legal assistance will keep track of the number of individuals applying for aid, the type of violations and actions taken, and the outcome of those cases. Helping Hand will also track official reaction to its programs and report on any press coverage. Participants in the Human Rights School and training programs will be asked to fill out questionnaires evaluating the programs. Helping Hand will monitor the development of the NGO sector in Chelyabinsk and the surrounding regions to evaluate the impact of these programs in the form of newly established NGOs, organizations that have managed to increase their level of funding and activity, and increased interest and participation by the public in the activities of NGOs. The effectiveness of the resource center will be evaluated by maintaining records of the organizations that seek consultations or make use of equipment and by monitoring the activities of these organizations for resulting improvements in their work.

V.        ORGANIZATIONAL BACKGROUND:

Helping Hand was founded by Tatiana and Nikolai Schoor, two well-known human rights activists from the closed city of Snezhinsk in Chelyabinsk oblast. In their work as the leaders of the human rights group “Shag Navstrechu” (a former NED recipient) and the ecological defense group “Ekologia,” the Schoors acquired considerable expertise in all aspects of NGO operations, from basic organizational issues to long-term planning, management and fundraising. Helping Hand was registered in January 1999, and over the past five years has carried out a series of projects on NGO and human rights issues. Helping Hand has managed to work successfully with the government of the city of Chelyabinsk and the Chelyabinsk oblast prison system on issues of human rights education. Helping Hand has also expanded its legal aid program to work with inmates and their families in the cities of Ekaterinburg, Magnitogorsk, and Zlatoust, as well as surrounding areas.